3/14/2011 @ 6:00AM

America's Most Loved Spokescharacters

“The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” as the nameless spokesman for Old Spice body wash is known, has a strong jaw, a sculpted torso and a resonant voice. He’s athletic, handy with tools and thoughtful with presents. He also smells pretty good.

From the point of view of
Procter & Gamble
, which makes Old Spice products, he’s even more perfect than that because, a little over a year after he first stepped out of the shower and into our living rooms, he’s already one of the most popular corporate spokescharacters, according to survey data from E-Poll Market Research of Encino, Calif. “It shows you what a new character can do,” says E-Poll Chief Executive Gerry Philpott.

Every month E-Poll surveys 1,500 people aged 13 to 49. Respondents are asked whether they are aware of each character, and, if so, whether they like him or her as well as whether they find the character “cool,” “funny” or “intriguing.”

Some 66% of respondents last month who recognized The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (played by NFL-er turned actor Isaiah Mustafa) said they liked him somewhat or a lot, giving him the second-highest appeal score of any brand-affiliated character. Only Snoopy, who appears in commercials for
MetLife
, had a higher appeal score, notching a 71%. (Rounding out the top five are the talking M&Ms,
Allstate’s
Mayhem man and the Most Interesting Man in the World, who pitches Dos Equis beer.)

Snoopy, of course, is a far more established figure than the Old Spice Man, however viral the latter’s videos may be on YouTube. It shows in the awareness figures: While only 19% of those in E-Poll’s sample recognized the handsome fellow in the towel, a full 62% knew the beagle from “Peanuts.”

But creating a character from scratch, rather than drafting an existing one, has its advantages. “To license a very popular character can be expensive,” notes Philpott, while creating a character of your own means the licensing dollars flow in, not out. (Mars Inc.’s talking M&Ms, No. 3 in the appeal ranking, are available in plush doll form.) Moreover, licensing a pre-existing character means working around the predefined attributes of that character. Want Snoopy to sing a song about the joys of good insurance? Too bad–Snoopy doesn’t talk.

On the other hand, Snoopy doesn’t age, or have a contract rider than dictates what brand of sparkling water must be available in his trailer during shoots. And he certainly doesn’t do what a distressingly high proportion of real-life celebrity endorsers do at some point: get caught in a personal scandal that makes their sponsors cringe. “That’s why a lot of advertisers are tying brands to characters they can control, because actors and celebrities you can’t control,” says Peter Murane, CEO of BrandJuice. “It allows you to deliver the brand message you want without any of the downside that comes with [real] people.”

The bigger the celebrity, the bigger the downside, as
Nike
,
Accenture
, P&G and other sponsors of golfer Tiger Woods learned the hard way in late 2009. But even unknown actors, being humans, can cause grief for their sponsors, as when Benjamin Curtis, a.k.a. Steven the Dell Dude, was arrested in 2003 and charged with buying marijuana.

On the other hand, not all bad attention is bad attention. E-Poll also asks its survey-takers about the characters they dislike. Topping that list are the Burger King and the Geico Caveman, with “negative appeal” scores of 38% and 29%, respectively. Explaining their dislike, similar proportions of respondents described each character as “annoying.” Still, both had awareness levels more than twice as high as that beloved Old Spice guy.

“It’s memorable,” says Philpott. “It’s one thing where someone just doesn’t like the character; it’s another where it’s kind of a love-to-hate. I don’t think it’s necessarily a negative for them.”